Review: The Daily Show’s Tomi Lahren Interview

Tomi Lahren is a right wing political and talk show host for The Blaze and in particular, many of her angry rants became fairly popular during the 2016 election. She is known for stating her often controversial opinions on hot topics, including the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and more recently, the Anti-Trump protests that ignited across the nation after the election results came out. A few weeks ago, she appeared on the Daily Show hosted by Trevor Noah, a liberal comedian and talk show host.

The interview began with Noah introducing Lahren to his audience and showing a few clips from her show. In these clips, Lahren was in visible rage, shouting about “misfit babies of every failed movement all sandwiched together to become the biggest crowd of whiners the country has ever seen.” This was in reference to the Anti-Trump protesters. There are several things wrong with this statement, not only was it extremely hateful, but there seemed to be a huge sense of hypocrisy. Conservatives such as Tomi Lahren are always preaching about the importance of constitutional rights, and as I recall, freedom of assembly is a first amendment right.

Noah then moved on to the elephant in the room: Lahren’s previous remarks on the Black Lives Matter movement. She had previously expressed very negative feelings towards the movement and always follows her comments by stating that she is not racist. For instance, here was an attack in Dallas in which a single individual shot five police officers at a BLM protest for Philando Castro and Alton Sterling who were murdered by policemen earlier this year. Lahren argued that because the shooter was at this protest, he was a BLM supporter and is representative of the BLM group in its entirety. Again we can see hypocrisy where Lahren has argued on her show that just because President-elect Donald Trump has KKK supporters and his campaign has received donations from the organization does not make him a white supremacist.

As a comedian, Trevor Noah attempts to make light of many of Tomi Lahren’s comments including when she stated that she “doesn’t see color” to which Noah retorted by asking her how she knows when to cross at a traffic light. There are several problems with this use of humor. It normalizes the hateful behavior that Lahren, the President-elect, and many other right wing personalities and politicians are displaying as of late. By making a joke out of her comments, he isn’t addressing the depth of the hatred for the people in the minority that the right wing has displayed. Her hatred fueled comments are not just comments for many of us. They are a strong reminder that blatant racism is still alive and prominent in our daily lives.

This can be seen in the recents events of mainstream media romanticizing the alt-right movement who have proven to hold white supremacist sentiment and Neo-nazi behavior. Mass media has spent more time covering the fact that members are young and well dressed and not enough time covering the fact that they are perpetuating a Neo-nazi agenda by chanting “Hail Trump!” at his rallies.

The biggest issue with this interview is that it even took place. Trevor Noah willingly gave a white supremacist an even bigger platform for the sake of viewership. The title of Noah’s interview interview is “Giving a Voice to Conservative America.”

Trevor, they already have a voice and a platform and they sure are not using it to further the liberal agenda so why are you lending yours to the conservatives?